"Prop" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... when I feel your hair under my fingers, I shiver; a heavenly joy comes over me, and I say to myself, In all this world of darkness which encompasses me, in this universe of solitude, in this great obscurity of ruin in which I am, in this quaking fear of myself and of everything, I have one prop; and he is there. It is ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... unfitness for the frying-pan. That controversy made it plain That letting go a good secure, In hope of future gain, Is but imprudence pure. The fisherman had reason good— The troutling did the best he could— Both argued for their lives. Now, if my present purpose thrives, I'll prop my former proposition By building on a small addition. A certain wolf, in point of wit The prudent fisher's opposite, A dog once finding far astray, Prepared to take him as his prey. The dog his leanness pled; 'Your lordship, sure,' he said, 'Cannot be very eager To eat a dog so ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... six or seven steps. Again he was an unregarded and negligible spectator. I presume he missed Johnny's hand in Albert's, and Johnny's pressure on Albert's shoulder—the one with the stain; and I hope he did. It was the hand of the stronger, taking possession. "My prop, my future mainstay!" ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... know 'bout Scripter when you say he secon' Moses. Don' want no more sich Moseses in dis town. Dey wouldn't lebe a brick heah ef dey could take dem off. He'n his tribe got away wid 'bout all ole Missus' and young Missus' prop'ty in my 'pinion. Anyhow I feels it in my bones dey's poah, an' I mus' try an' fin' out. Dey's so proud dey'd starbe fore ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... be? That thought made me furious: for the third time I approached the hand with my own: I clasped it, and at the same instant I tried to rise, to draw this dead body towards me, and be certain of the hideous crime. But, as I strove to prop myself on my left elbow, the cold hand I was clasping became alive, and was withdrawn—and I knew that instant, to my utter astonishment, that I held none other than my own left hand, which, lying stiffened on the hard floor, had ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... congratulate you, sir, on being without reproach in your business relations. You will suit me to a nicety. I lost two years ago the old man who sat at this desk for the last forty years. He was the only friend I had in the wide earth. He was my prop and support, and now that he is gone, I feel tottering and weak. I want some one to assist me in the cares of my immense business; a partner, young, active, and possessed of just the ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... hot blood gets together and there's nobody by. They may mean to be straight enough, but before they knows where they are, nature's took hold of them, and there they are.... But even supposin' that 'asn't happened, I don't know as I'm much better off. That girl was the very prop of my business; she's gone, never to return, accordin' to her own account. As to this marryin' business, that may seem to you, Archdeacon, to improve things, but I'm not so sure that it does after all. You may be all very 'igh and mighty in your way, but I'm thinkin' of myself ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... him when he stands, as you say, beside the throne, once your father is again seated there. We can afford to bide our time, and assuredly it will not be long before a party is formed against Warwick. Until then we must bear everything. Our interests are the same. If he is content to remain a prop to the throne, and not to eclipse it, the memory of the past will not stand between us, and I shall regard him as the weapon that has beaten down the House of York and restored us to our own, and shall give him my confidence and friendship. ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... game for food. Chief of their traps was the dead-fall, made by propping up one end of a short piece of puncheon or hewed plank, in such a way that it would fall upon the animal which attempted to secure the bait placed on a trigger beneath it. This trigger was a part of the prop under the puncheon and gave way at the slightest jar. As the plank fell it caught the creature which had disturbed it, and being weighted down with stones, ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... "Prop it up on any leg you like, only go," said Benson simply. "I'll take it as a personal favor, and do as much for you, some time. I suppose I don't have to warn you not to fall in love with Faith Dawson yourself—or, on second thought, perhaps I ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... wife and children, all the money I had earned and could earn by my night labor was consumed, till I found myself reduced to five dollars, and this I lost one day in going to the plantation. My light of hope now went out. My prop seemed to have given way from under me. Sunk in the very night of despair respecting my freedom, I discovered myself, as though I had never known it before, a husband, the father of two children, a family looking up to me for bread, and I a slave, penniless, and well watched by my master, his wife ...
— The Narrative of Lunsford Lane, Formerly of Raleigh, N.C. • Lunsford Lane
... he was kind," began Polly, in a soothing tone; but Tom cried out, remorsefully, "That 's what knocks me over! Just when I ought to be a pride and a prop to him, I bring him my debts and disgrace, and he never says a word of blame. It 's no use, I can't stand it!" and Tom's head went down again with something very like a sob, that would come in spite of manful ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... my faith is strong, His arm is my almighty prop: Be glad, my heart; rejoice, my tongue, My dying flesh shall rest ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... she were still the dupe of his stoicism. Stanwell was sure that the sculptor would take no one into his confidence, and least of all his sister, whose faith in his artistic independence was the chief prop of that tottering pose. Kate's penetration was not great, and Stanwell recalled the incredulous smile with which she had heard him defend poor Mungold's "sincerity" against Caspar's assaults; but she had the insight of the heart, and where her brother's happiness ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... much delighted with the white flowers. We resolved then to educate our daughter piously, and prayed fervently to God that she, who was then as full of promise as the blossoms on the tree, might by his grace one day be the prop of our old age. That prayer is now fulfilled beyond our fondest anticipations. Praise for ever be to the ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... top of the ball," said Professor Lucifer, simply. "That is surely wrong. The ball should be on top of the cross. The cross is a mere barbaric prop; the ball is perfection. The cross at its best is but the bitter tree of man's history; the ball is the rounded, the ripe and final fruit. And the fruit should be at the top of the tree, not ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... to be shaken by the fall of the present tyranny in Peru, of which there are not only indications, but the result is inevitable—unless, indeed, the mischievous counsels of vain and mercenary men can suffice to prop up a fabric of the most barbarous political architecture, serving as a screen from whence to dart their weapons against the heart of liberty. Thank God, my hands are free from the stain of labouring in any such work; and having finished all you gave me to ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... that kind, too, but we've got to prop up feeling with a power of work and patience and danger, and it's likely too, Will, that it will be a long time before we reach the end of the ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... are rewarded! She of both is now discarded, Who to both had been so late Their support in low estate, All their comfort, and their stay— Now of both is cast away. But the league her presence cherish'd, Losing its best prop, soon perish'd; She, that was a link to either, To keep them and it together, Being gone, the two (no wonder) That were left, soon fell asunder;— Some civilities were kept, But the heart of friendship slept; Love with hollow ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... a part of the plateau which was invisible from the plain, and here in feverish haste they built a little cairn. Many flaky slabs of stone were lying about, and it did not take long to prop the largest of these against a rock, so as to make a lean-to, and then to put two side-pieces to complete it. The slabs were of the same colour as the rock, so that to a casual glance the hiding-place was not very visible. The two ladies were squeezed into this, and they crouched together, ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... access of litigation in which the citizen Indian figures as a party defendant and in a more widespread disposition to levy local taxation upon his personalty, but in a decision of the United States Supreme Court which struck away the main prop on which has hitherto rested the Government's benevolent effort to protect him against the evils of intemperance. The court holds, in effect, that when an Indian becomes, by virtue of an allotment of land to him, a citizen of the State in which his land is ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... every reason to suppose that this illness, like all her former ones, will be but temporary; but I cannot always feel so. Meantime she is dead to me and I miss a prop. All my strength is gone, and I am like a fool, bereft of her co-operation. I dare not think, lest I should think wrong; so used am I to look up to her in the least and the biggest perplexity. To say all ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... 1: The higher a virtue is, the greater the number of things to which it extends, as stated in De Causis, prop. x, xvii. Wherefore from the very fact that wisdom as a gift is more excellent than wisdom as an intellectual virtue, since it attains to God more intimately by a kind of union of the soul with Him, it is able to direct us not only in ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... the consequences. Mr. Graylock is in a bad box. His creditors are pushing him hard, and I think that to-morrow his house will be in the hands of the courts. He declares that he was holding those securities to prop up his business at the last hour; but Mr. Goodwyn has admitted to me that they would have been only a drop in the bucket; that the failure was bound to come. Now you can see what object he would have in taking the papers after they had been examined by the cashier; and in getting ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... she cried. "You may flout our beliefs,—but wouldn't you like to bolster up your report with an endorsement by the wife of a clergyman! It sounds so respectable and sane, doesn't it? No, sir! You can't prop up your wild-eyed theories against the good black of one minister's coat. Not by any means! I think myself that you have probably stumbled on the truth about Willem's mother; but that doesn't prove ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... carved-up and bloody madman have taught me that I am not made for such work and such sights. I could never be at home in that trade. Face swords and the big guns and death? It isn't in me. No, no; count me out. And besides, I'm the eldest son, and deputy prop and protector of the family. Since you are going to carry Jean and Pierre to the wars, somebody must be left behind to take care of our Joan and her sister. I shall stay at home, and grow old in peace ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... the rest of his earthly pilgrimage with only a leg and a half—let the added half be of what material it might. And his excitement may be better imagined than described when, one afternoon, the surgeon came in with a most wonderful object in his arms—a lovely prop of bright, black, burnished wood, set off with steel couplings and the most fascinating straps you ever saw. And the best of all was the socket, in which his soft white stump fitted as comfortably as though they had been made for one another—as, ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... various readings of the word which is here translated prowess, e.g. cobnet, colwed, eofned, but all of them are capable of that construction, thus "cobnet" comes from cobiaw, to thump, "colwed," from col a sting, or a prop, whilst "eofned" literally ...
— Y Gododin - A Poem on the Battle of Cattraeth • Aneurin
... nightfall," he replied. "In passing across this open ground we should lose many men from the cannon shots, and with so small a force remaining, might not be able to resist the onrush of so great numbers. Let us prepare, however, to prop up the gates should they fall, and tonight we ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... bad faith kept up by his affection, he sought in everything that he saw, heard, or read, for arguments to prop up his will to believe in the holiness of the cause, for everything which went to prove that the enemy alone had wanted war, was the sole enemy of peace, and that to make war on the enemy was ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... for my stature, I keep me on the shore; and this knowledge that a man can proceed no further, is one effect of its virtue, yes, one of those of which it is most proud. One while in an idle and frivolous subject, I try to find out matter whereof to compose a body, and then to prop and support it; another while, I employ it in a noble subject, one that has been tossed and tumbled by a thousand hands, wherein a man can scarce possibly introduce anything of his own, the way being so beaten on every side that he must of necessity walk in the steps of another: ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... your favor," laughed the monarch. "I ever prefer sober manhood to callow youth about me. The one is a prop, stanch, tried; the other a reed that bends this way and that, or breaks when you press ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... sect he belongs to, or what creed he believes: but I look on the man who is firmly persuaded of infinite Wisdom and Goodness superintending and directing every circumstance that can happen in his lot—I felicitate such a man for having a solid foundation for his mental enjoyment; a firm prop and sure stay, in the hour of difficulty, trouble, and distress; and a never-failing anchor of hope when he looks ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... her like a dog in a leash to the tent, and tied the other end of the string to the scull, which was the tent's main prop and support. ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... saying things to him which he should not have said. But his retainer took it all in the day's work, and never bore malice, continuing in his own cadging pigheaded sort of way to labour early and late to prop up his master's broken fortunes. "Lord, sir," as he once said to Harold Quaritch when the Colonel condoled with him after a violent and unjust onslaught made by the Squire in his presence, "Lord, sir, that ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... that God has given him—a sight of the uncleanness of his best performance. The former sight of his immoralities did somewhat distress him, and make him betake himself to his own good deeds to ease his conscience; wherefore this was his prop, his stay. But behold, now God has taken this from under him, and now he falls. Wherefore his best doth also now forsake him, and fly away ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... there anything like a lever about a wheelbarrow?' said his father. 'O yes, sir,' said JAMES. 'The axle; and the wheel is the prop, the load is the weight, and the power ...
— Punchinello Vol. 1, No. 21, August 20, 1870 • Various
... lodge, remain, continue, abide; support, prop, buttress, brace, uphold, strengthen; delay, obstruct, hinder, restrain, appease, withhold, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... the medicine-man, and he has done his utmost; he is powerless, his art useless. What he did was done in the conviction that spiritual influences, however grossly conceived and coarsely applied, could compel the soul to master the body's ailment, could prop up the sinking machinery and strengthen the motive power without regard to its decaying tools. To-day, provided the body is helped along with physical means, the soul would remain against its will, or against the will of what stands in closer ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... Eve, would not have been lonelier in a desert. The signs of Christmas preparation and the sounds of Christmas cheer but made him lonelier. For years, flying from the Furies, he had immersed himself in work and so, in part, had forgotten his troubles; but the removal of this prop let him ...
— The Christmas Peace - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... not come deg.? The messenger was sure— Prop me upon the pillows once again— Raise me, my page! this cannot long endure. —Christ, what a night! how the sleet whips the pane! What lights will those out to the northward ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... better than any bonds. At first, Helen seemed unconscious of it, as she stood rigid and motionless, with her wild eyes dumbly imploring help of earth and heaven. Suddenly both strength and excitement seemed to leave her, and she would have fallen but for the living, loving prop ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... their heritors in sorrow are crying still. Now it is a bed-ridden mother bewailing her only son, "the principal prop and stay of her old age"; again a wife, left destitute "with three hopeful babes, and pregnant." And here, bringing up the rear of the sad procession—lending to it, moreover, a touch of humour in itself not ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... that her life was in my hands, and that it depended, not on that prompt action which was the one course I had contemplated, but on twenty-four hours of resolute inactivity! I would not think it. I refused the condition. It took away my one prop, my one stay, that prospect of immediate measures which alone preserved in me such coolness as I had retained until now. I was cool no longer; where I had relied on practical direction I was baffled and hindered and driven mad; on my honor believe I was little less ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... The hosts of law and order with his eyes By anger cleared, and him the liberal cause Acclaimed as nominee to the mayoralty To vanquish A. D. Blood. But as the war Waged bitterly for votes and rumors flew About the bank, and of the heavy loans Which Rhodes, son had made to prop his loss In wheat, and many drew their coin and left The bank of Rhodes more hollow, with the talk Among the liberals of another bank Soon to be chartered, lo, the bubble burst 'Mid cries and curses; but the ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... all, save the moon and the empty sky. He had heard the rush of the prop-wash, but he had seen nothing, heard nothing else. Incredible as it seemed, the pilot was flying a plane that had attained not merely invisibility but complete ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... liable to mislead, amidst appearances sometimes dubious, vicissitudes of fortune often discouraging, in situations in which not infrequently want of success has countenanced the spirit of criticism, the constancy of your support was the essential prop of the efforts, and the guaranty of the plans by which they were effected. Profoundly penetrated with this idea, I shall carry it with me to my grave, as a strong incitement to unceasing vows that Heaven may continue ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... ladders, each of which had only two canes somewhat more than eight brazas in length: the steps consisted of strips and slips cut from the said cane. They were used in decorating the church and each one would sustain at its top two or three men; they were erected without any prop being needed to sustain them. Each cane was at the lowest part about three palmos in circumference, which crosswise or in diameter would be about one palmo. [47] These ladders are well adapted to such needs, for being, as they are, strong and yet hollow, they are not very ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... sleeper settled there. Never was more eccentric attitude adopted for a night's rest! The mandibles bite right into the lavender-stem. Its square shape supplies a firmer hold than a round stalk would do. With this one and only prop, the animal's body juts out stiffly, at full length, with legs folded. It forms a right angle with the supporting axis, so much so that the whole weight of the insect, which has turned itself into the arm of a lever ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... lasses, could be made to turn pale or red any day by a word or a look from her. Hetty's sphere of comparison was not large, but she couldn't help perceiving that Adam was "something like" a man; always knew what to say about things, could tell her uncle how to prop the hovel, and had mended the churn in no time; knew, with only looking at it, the value of the chestnut-tree that was blown down, and why the damp came in the walls, and what they must do to stop the rats; ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... functions, and the foinest pisintry in the wuruld would instantly rebel against such a nonentity. The farmers remember the oft-repeated statements of Mr. Timothy Healy to the effect that "landlordism is the prop of the British Government, and it is that we want to kick away." And the benefit accruing from this vigorous action was by the same eloquent patriot very plainly stated. "The people of this country ought ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... me, as sincerely as I have believed in my father's love for me; and I think now that you were more to me than I realized. But, Roderick, have you ever watched a woodman in the forest chopping down a tree? And have you ever seen that tree fall, when its natural prop was stolen away by the sharp edge of the axe? It may have taken that tree a hundred, or a thousand years to grow; but when it crashes down, it is gone forever. A little, puny man has gone into the forest with an axe upon his shoulder, and has ruthlessly attacked one of God's greatest ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... fragrancy upon the recollection of the elder pupils. The school-room stands where it did, looking into a discolored, dingy garden, in the passage leading from Fetter Lane into Bartlett's Buildings. It is still a school,—though the main prop, alas! has fallen so ingloriously,—and bears a Latin inscription over the entrance in the lane, which was unknown in our humbler times. Heaven knows what "languages" were taught in it then! I am sure that neither my sister nor myself brought ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... knew very well that Kate was merely propping her hope with the statement, but she was glad enough to accept the prop for her own hopes. So they talked desultorily and with that arms-length amiability which is the small currency of polite conversation between two strange women, and Mrs. Singleton Corey laid aside her dignity with her fur-lined coat, and made tea ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... the flat of his massive hand. "You'll work another period, sewer rat, if I have to prop you up!" ...
— Vulcan's Workshop • Harl Vincent
... Center, which is not much of a center, Miss Dawes alighted from the buggy and entered a building bearing a sign with the words "Metropolitan Variety Store, Joshua Atwood, Prop'r, Groceries, Coal, Dry Goods, Insurance, Boots and Shoes, Garden Seeds, etc." A smaller sign beneath this was lettered "Justice of the Peace," and one below that read ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Lean times and foreign wars should minds unite; When poor, men mutter, but they seldom fight. O holy Alha! that I live to see Thy Granadines assist their enemy! You fight the christians' battles; every life You lavish thus, in this intestine strife, Does from our weak foundations take one prop, Which helped to ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... player who handles his pawns wisely, Eudemius began to conjure up hopes which, in spite of himself, he knew might never see fulfilment. The more he saw of Marius, the more he coveted his strength to prop his dying house. His fortune would be safe in Marius's hands, his name would be safe in Marius's keeping. For with all his faults Marius had a soldier's honor, and could guard what was given to his charge. Forthwith, then, Eudemius began to lay silent plans; to scheme indirectly, ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... arrived at some lines of big stones, that must have belonged to some town of enormous or incalculable antiquity; and this, they told us, was Hharrasheh. As for columns, the people told us to stoop into a cavern; but there we could perceive nothing but a piece of the rock remaining as a prop in the middle. "Well, now for the figures of the children of men." The people looked furious, and screamed. They gathered round us with their guns; but Asaad insisted; so a detachment of them led us down the side of a bare ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... frontier is, not that they insisted on their rights, but that they were guilty of treachery to both friend and foe. The success of the British was incompatible with the good of mankind in general, and of the English-speaking races in particular; for they strove to prop up savagery, and to bar the westward march of the settler-folk whose destiny it was to make ready the continent for civilization. But the British cannot be seriously blamed because they failed to see this. Their fault lay in their aiding and encouraging ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... enough. The deputation broke up at once; but with how many lamentations over this unexpected reception, given by one whom they had reckoned upon as the chief stay and prop of their sect. ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... of charcoal should be placed in the refrigerator to keep it sweet. When putting your best tea or coffee urn away, drop a small piece of charcoal in it and prop the lid open ...
— Fowler's Household Helps • A. L. Fowler
... damaged. Thus the interior of the peg-box will be found a convenient position from which to build a support that shall reach up underneath the volute or under turn of the scroll. Having well tried the parts as to the fitting, the support or prop may be secured or glued in roughly to the lower surface of the peg-box—presuming of course that the pegs have all been removed—and left to dry hard. When so the parts had better be tried for fitting again, and if any little ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... hate to harrify your heart. The Doctor comforted her all he could, and tole her bizness of importance had done kept you South. Miss Ellie axed how long she could live; he said only a few hours. She begged him to prop her up, so she could write a few words. He says he held the paper for her, and she wrote a little, and rested; and then she wrote a little mere and fell back speechless. He pat the piece of paper in a invellop and sealed it, and axed her if ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... sir?" asked one, drawing forward the battered wicker arm-chair. "It's all right as long as you don't lean back—but if you do we must prop it against the table." He suited the action to the words, and the guest sat down ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... it organized by the State, as well in Greece as in Rome. What views existed on the subject during the Middle Ages has likewise been described. Even St. Augustine, who, next to St. Paul, must be looked upon as the most important prop of Christendom, and who diligently preached asceticism, could not refrain from exclaiming: "Suppress the public girls, and the violence of passion will knock everything of a heap." The provincial Council of Milan, in 1665, expressed ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... received a summons to his sister, who lived with her mother in the little country town. There he was witness to a short, sharp contest with pneumonia; then came a defeat; and then a quiet burial in the village churchyard; next a sinking from hour to hour of the invalid mother whose prop and stay had been taken from beneath her; a second calling of friends to the stricken home; and ere two weeks of absence had been told, Steve found himself alone in the world, as far as any near of kin ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... passions, agitated in every direction, were liable to mislead— amidst appearances sometimes dubious—vicissitudes of fortune often discouraging—in situations in which not unfrequently want of success has countenanced the spirit of criticism—the constancy of your support was the essential prop of the efforts and a guarantee of the plans by which they were effected. Profoundly penetrated with this idea, I shall carry it with me to my grave, as a strong incitement to unceasing wishes, that Heaven may continue to you the choicest ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... his timid homekeeping countrymen, and giving careful measurements of everything measurable—the masts of the steamers, the length of the wharves, the height of the Arc de Triomphe, as if in some mysterious way statistics could prove a prop to the faint-hearted. Of the four lads in the "experiment," two afterwards filled high diplomatic posts. A certain Fang I was made Charge d'Affaires in London and later Consul-General in Singapore, while Chang Teh Ming was made Minister Plenipotentiary ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... others rather than for himself. Parts of the passionate rebuke which suffering and indignation had forced from him remained branded upon her memory; and she wept in shame, feeling her helplessness, her ignorance, her inexperience, feeling that she had no longer any sure support or prop. For how could she trust those who had drawn her into this hideous, this cruel business? Who, taking advantage at once of her wounded vanity, and her affection for her brother, had led her to this act, from which she now ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... pantaloons, who agreed to take me to the village of Val Tournanche. We set off early on the next morning, and got to the summit of the pass without difficulty. It gave me my first experience of considerable slopes of hard, steep snow, and, like all beginners, I endeavored to prop myself up with my stick, and kept it outside, instead of holding it between myself and the slope, and leaning upon it, as should ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... wrenched from him. For, when he saw that swift, limpid, upward look that she gave the man when he took her hand, he knew himself to be forgotten. Once that same look had been raised to him, and he had gauged its meaning. Indeed, his conceit had crumbled; its last prop was gone. Why had it ended thus? There had been no ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... mortal life, through much importuning I was constrain'd to wear the hat that still From bad to worse it shifted.—Cephas came; He came, who was the Holy Spirit's vessel, Barefoot and lean, eating their bread, as chanc'd, At the first table. Modern Shepherd's need Those who on either hand may prop and lead them, So burly are they grown: and from behind Others to hoist them. Down the palfrey's sides Spread their broad mantles, so as both the beasts Are cover'd with one skin. O patience! thou That lookst on this and doth endure so long." I at those accents saw the splendours ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... eternal repetition, and it was now evident that I must trust to my own ability to pull the matter quickly through as I thought best. But it was not the fatigue due to this system that finally made Niemann, the main prop in my work, recoil from the task which at the start he had undertaken with an energy full of promise. He had been informed that there was a conspiracy to ruin my work. From this time forward he was a victim to a despondency to which, in his relations with me, ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... surrounded with high stone-walls, or ditches, planted with a kind of cane or large reed, which answers many purposes in this country. The leaves of it afford sustenance to the asses, and the canes not only serve as fences to the inclosures; but are used to prop the vines and pease, and to build habitations for the silkworms: they are formed into arbours, and wore as walking-staves. All these gardens are watered by little rills that come from the mountains, particularly, by the small branches of the two sources which I ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... asserted, ignoring the fact that his rising from the ground to an erect posture was entirely due to the combined efforts of Halfman and Evander, one on each side, and then, when he did get to his feet, he was only able to retain the perpendicular by leaning heavily upon Halfman as a steady prop. From under his bandaged forehead his pale-blue eyes regarded Evander with ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... of the chivalrous past, was a source of still more satisfaction to the baron than he cared to avow. The congratulations of his numerous acquaintance pleased him, and he felt it a prop to his self-respect, which it often needed. A week later, Ehrenthal came on his way to the neighboring village to offer his congratulations too, and just as he was making his final bow he said, "You had once a notion, baron, of setting up a beet-root-sugar ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... generous patronage. {74} 'I know not how I shall offend,' Shakespeare now wrote to him, 'in dedicating my unpolished lines to your lordship, nor how the world will censure me for choosing so strong a prop to support so weak a burden. . . . But if the first heir of my invention prove deformed, I shall be sorry it had so noble a godfather.' 'The first heir of my invention' implies that the poem was written, or at least designed, before Shakespeare's dramatic work. It ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... fits a little Shrine, A little Prop best fits a little Vine, As my small Cruse best fits my ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... ask. Apropos of everything, and of nothing; apropos of the Oudenarde tower, which was falling, and which some wished to pull down, and others to prop up; apropos of the police regulations issued by the council, which some obstinate citizens threatened to resist; apropos of the sweeping of the gutters, repairing the sewers, and so on. Nor did the enraged orators confine themselves to the internal ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... Troops, And strait with me to Abdelazer's Tent, Where all his Claims he shall resign to you, Both in my self, the Kingdom, and the Crown: You being departed, thousands more will leave him, And you're alone the Prop to his Rebellion. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... redoubtable janissary who fought against Europeans; these troops, who were not allowed to marry, gave an absolute obedience. They were perhaps the finest infantry in the world—for two hundred years they formed the strongest prop of the Turkish Empire. Paulus Jovius, the historian, says that in 1531 nearly the whole corps of janissaries spoke Slav. Other young men were received into the Government offices—the Porte, until the end of the seventeenth century, used the Serbian ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... State has lost its prop, and therefore it is toppling over; the State has an enemy that has grown too strong for it. Restore the prop, which is the nobility, and crush the enemy, ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... self-sufficingness, they must have the countenance of others. It is these pressing needs that will hurry the primates to build, out of each shred of truth they can possibly twist to their purpose, and out of imaginings that will impress them because they are vast, deity after deity to prop up their souls. ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... persons, the whole power and authority belonging to it was, on particular occasions, committed to one; and upon great alarms, when the political fabric was shaken or endangered, a monarchical power has been applied, like a prop, to secure the state against the rage of the tempest. Thus were the dictators occasionally named at Rome, and the stadtholders in the United Provinces; and thus, in mixed governments, the royal prerogative ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... the very attitude of confident dependence takes the strain off a man. To feel that I am leaning hard upon a firm prop, to devolve responsibility, to put the reins into another's hand, to give the helm into another steersman's grasp, whilst I may lie down and rest, that is blessedness, though there be a storm. In the story of frontier warfare we ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... goatee. He stared wildly. His jaw dropped. "W'y, Lawd!" he breathed perplexedly, and his chest heaved beneath the grey flannel of his shirt. Slowly he hobbled forward in his bare feet, using the gun for a prop. Before the pole, he halted, and began tousling his grizzled crown with trembling fingers. Overhead, the scalp-weighted rag swung to and fro in the breeze, ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... the Admiraltry, & seconded by another—there is also the Solicitor General (a Wedderburne in Principle but not equal to him in Ability) the Advocate General &c &c. The whole Design of these Addresses is to prop a sinking Character ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... wooden tenements. Some of them were built on piles, and seemed to stand on stilts, holding their draggled skirts out of the mud of their untidy yards: some sagged on rotting sills, leaning shoulder to shoulder as if to prop one another up. From each front door a shaky flight of steps ran down to the unpaved sidewalk, where pigs and children and hens, and the daily tramp of feet to and from the Maitland Works, had beaten the earth into a hard, black surface—or a soft, black surface, ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... that it is salt; nor need a critic dissect a whole system after proving that its premises are rotten. I shall accordingly confine myself to a few of the points that captivate beginners most; and assume that if they break down, so must the system which they prop. ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... Mother Katharine's eyes as she kissed her son; old Gottlieb said: "Philip, you are the prop and stay of our old age. Continue to be honest and good, and to love your parents, so will a blessing rest on you. I can give you nothing for a New Year's gift, but a prayer that you may keep your heart pure and true—this is in your power—you ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... slipped off his own sun-faded coat and rolled the sleeves of his flannel shirt above his elbows, and then, with shoulder thrusting up; and arms straining, he heaved the car high enough so that the flabby gentleman could set the prop under the axle. And when the gentleman began to dust his gloves and to search for spots on his gray immaculateness, Farr dug tools from the box and proceeded to the work of replacing ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... Bridge, made all of golde, Over the sea from one to other side, Withouten prop or pillour it t'upholde, But like the coloured rainbowe arched wide: 550 Not that great arche which Traian edifide, To be a wonder to all age ensuing, Was matchable to this ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... a dud bus—only does seventy-five on the ceiling. Too much stagger, and prop stops on a spin. Besides, I never did care for rotaries. Full of ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... That was the prop to his fame—that he had broken Jim Wilder's outlaw. Certainly he was admired and commended for the unhesitating action he had taken in avenging the death of his friend, but in that he had done only what was expected of any man worthy ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... down, he would have followed the lecturer with ease, and would have understood all his subsequent reasoning. If a child attempts to push any thing heavier than himself, his feet slide away from it, and the object can be moved only at intervals, and by sudden starts; but if he be desired to prop his feet against the wall, he finds it easy to push what before eluded his little strength. Here the use of a fulcrum, or fixed point, by means of which bodies may be moved, is distinctly understood. If two boys lay a board across a narrow block of wood, or stone, and balance each ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... time the wind blows hard.— (Frontenac au Ministre, 15 Septembre, 1692). A misunderstanding with the Intendant, who had control of the money, interrupted the work. Frontenac writes the next year that he had been "obliged to send for carpenters during the night, to prop up the chateau, lest he should be crushed under the ruins." The wall of the fort was, however, strengthened, and partly rebuilt to the height of sixteen feet, at a cost of 13,629 francs. It was a time of war, and a fresh attack was expected from the ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... also, what he seems still more proud of, a lord of parliament; but I will front him in both capacities, and frankly tell him, that in the first he is a burthen to his own estate, and not a benefactor; and in the second, a peer but not a prop. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... expenses of Daniel's education. The farm was heavily mortgaged, and Ebenezer Webster knew that he was old before his time and not destined to many more years of life. With the perfect and self-sacrificing courage which he always showed, he did not shrink from this new demand, although Ezekiel was the prop and mainstay of the house. He did not think for a moment of himself, yet, while he gave his consent, he made it conditional on that of the mother and daughters whom he felt he was soon to leave. But Mrs. Webster had the same spirit as her ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... broken lights in the kitchen windows, and got rid of all the old hats and bonnets that had been stuffed into them. He put on new buttons to keep up the sashes, and so banished the big sticks from the wood-pile that had been used to prop them up. He said they were too ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... Pretender, and how little influence he could obtain over the Jacobite counsels. The hopeless Rebellion of 1715, in Scotland, Bolingbroke laboured in vain to delay until there might be some chance of success. The death of Louis XIV., on the 1st of September in that year, had removed the last prop ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... indicates a tremendous flaw; the speech of Sir Robert Peel betrays an irreparable bulge; the sudden conversions to free-trade principles of officials and place-holders show a general outpouring at opening rents and crannies: depend on it, Protectionists, your dam-dyke, patch or prop it as you please, is on the eve of destruction; yet a very little longer, and it will be hurtling ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... their Instruments; to prop Their Mighty Cause, and Israels Murmurs stop; They find a sort of Academick Tools; Who by the Politick Doctrine of their Schools, Betwixt Reward, Pride, Avarice, Hope and Fear, Prizing their Heav'n ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.
... to prop up another, and that in turn mortgaged to save a third. Like links in a chain. Any chain is only as strong as its weakest link, remember. And we've got the links. Look at these, please." ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... prop of an agricultural country such as Russia principally is, the peasant population, is pauperized, starving and is being driven under the banners of the Red Armies by lash and rifle. The numerically small class ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... shall do, for we ain't talked it over much yet, but with church twice on Sunday and prayer-meetin' Wednesday evenings, and the sewin' circle on Friday, and two New York papers every week, and Miriam, and all your pa's books to prop up against the lamp, I don't reckon I'll get so dreadful lonesome. I've thought some of gettin' myself a cat. There's somethin' mighty comfortable and heartenin' about a cup of hot tea and the sound of purrin' close by. And on ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... of many similar bodies moving around the sun, which in turn is only one of countless suns—for every star is a sun. Now Newton wondered what held these mighty spheres in their places in space, for they appeared to move in definite and well-regulated orbits without any visible support or prop. It is alleged that the answer to the problem was suggested by the great philosopher's observation of a falling apple. The same invisible force that made the apple fall to the ground must, he is said to have reasoned, control the moon, sun, and stars. The earth is pulled toward ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... that luxury is specifically cheaper than comfort (and they regard them as independent, if not incompatible terms); and more than this, that comfort is, after all, but an irrelevant and dispensable corollary to gentility, while luxury is its main prop and stay. Furthermore, that improvidence is a virtue of such lustre, that itself or its likeness is essential to the very existence of respectability; and, by carrying out this proposition, that in order ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 2, 1841 • Various
... for, my dearie?" asked her mother, standing behind her as a prop, while the thin fingers did their work so willingly that not ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... not my learning Rhetorick wit so large, Hath now the power, death's warfare to discharge, It's not my goodly state, nor bed of downs That can refresh, or ease, if Conscience frown, Nor from Alliance can I now have hope, But what I have done well that is my prop; He that in youth is Godly, wise and sage, Provides a staff then to support his Age. Mutations great, some joyful and some sad, In this short pilgrimage I oft have had; Sometimes the Heavens with plenty smiled on me, Sometime ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... fortification walls. Then, as the lower layers of bricks became saturated and refused their support to the rows above, the wall began to crack and soon to totter to its fall. The citizens for some time tried to prop it with pieces of timber, and used other devices to avert the imminent ruin of their tower; but finding themselves overmatched by the water, and in dread lest the fall at some point or other of the circular wall ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... that his Lordship read in my partial defence of Kilkee, a slight attempt to prop up my own case, and felt confused and embarrassed ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... drew off a small, worn, gold ring which had lost its "set," and laid it in the man's hand, saying, "That's all the prop'ty I've got except eight hens which I gave Gail for those I poisoned. It had a ruby in it once, but the old rooster picked it out and et it. I used to have two bunnies, too, but last Christmas the German kids ate ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... True friendship is a goodly thing and a rare in this world, and, therefore, to be treasured; 'tis thing no man may buy or seek, since itself is seeker and cometh of itself; 'tis a prop—a staff in stony ways, a shield 'gainst foes, a light i' the dark. So do I love friendship, Robin, and thou'rt my friend, yet must leave thee, ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... after becoming a cripple in his service. He resolved to go to Paris, to declare his need to the king, and to implore the royal bounty. This journey was the last hope of the family, and my father was just entering on it when my mother sickened and died. She was the prop, the right arm of my father; she was the nurse, the teacher of his poor boy; now he had no hope more, except in the favor of the king and in death. The last valuables were sold, and father and son journeyed to Paris: an invalid whose bravery had cost him an arm, and whose tears ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... will miss the minute divisions, subdivisions, and definitions, the lettered and numbered headings, the variations of type, and all the other mechanical artifices on which they are accustomed to prop their minds. But my main desire has been to make them conceive, and, if possible, reproduce sympathetically in their imagination, the mental life of their pupil as the sort of active unity which he himself feels it to be. He doesn't chop himself into distinct processes and compartments; ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... back in his chair, pale as ashes. All was lost, then. Cora had betrayed him! But he resolved not to commit himself. Perhaps Madeline had only verbal information. While he was trying to frame a speech, however, she knocked this last prop ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... What dreadful mischiefs would ensue; Though it might aggrandise the state, Could private luxury dine on plate? Kings might indeed their friends reward, But ministers find less regard. Informers, sycophants, and spies, Would not augment the year's supplies. 40 Perhaps, too, take away this prop, An annual job or two might drop. Besides, if pensions were denied, Could avarice support its pride? It might even ministers confound, And yet the state be safe and sound. I care not though 'tis understood I only mean my country's ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... fish, and in making toast before a blazing fire, stand the wire toaster upright before the fire and prop it up with ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... lessened against the sky in Henchard's eyes; his exertions for Farfrae's good had been in vain. Over this repentant sinner, at least, there was to be no joy in heaven. He cursed himself like a less scrupulous Job, as a vehement man will do when he loses self-respect, the last mental prop under poverty. To this he had come after a time of emotional darkness of which the adjoining woodland shade afforded inadequate illustration. Presently he began to walk back again along the way by ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... differently in the country. We don't build a house by way of experiment and live in it a few years, then tear it down and build another. We live in a house till it cracks, and then we plaster it over; then it totters, and we prop it up; then it rocks, and we rope it down; then it sprawls, and we clamp it; then it crumbles, and we have a new underpinning,—but keep living in it all the time. To know what moving really means, you must move from just such a rickety-rackety old farmhouse, where you have clung and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... while a poor sister's destitute. My heart bleeds for her! and till I see her sorrows moderated, love has no joys for me. Lew. Can I be less a friend by being a brother? I would not say an unkind thing; but the pillar of your house is shaken. Prop it with another, and it shall stand firm again. You ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore
... and MSS. E, A, and I, is this marginal note—"This is to be understood of circumstance of worldlie men, and not of them of God; for the neirer that men draw to God, we ar bound the more to love them." Also a similar note to page 24, Prop. IV., "Christ is the ende and fulfillinge of the lawe to everie one ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... of form merely, shape the substances they deal with; but construct or arrange them with a view to the resistance of some external force. We construct, for instance, a table with a flat top, and some support of prop, or leg, proportioned in strength to such weights as the table is intended to carry. We construct a ship out of planks, or plates of iron, with reference to certain forces of impact to be sustained, and of inertia to be overcome; or we construct a wall or roof with distinct ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... half-boiled cauliflowers! Never mind, it will be all the better background. Now, I saw a majestic lady reposing somewhere. There, let her sit against it. Oh, she mustn't flop over. Here, that match-box, is it? I pity the person deluded enough to use it! Prop her up with it. Now then, let us have a presentation of ladies-she's a governor's wife in the colonies, you see. Never mind costumes, they may be queer. All that will stand or kneel-that's right. Those that can ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... woke, and glad enough was she of his human company. They breakfasted upon some biscuits and water, and afterwards, while Mr. Clifford watched near the entrance with his rifle, Benita set to work to arrange their belongings. The tent she managed to prop up against the wall of the cave by help of some of the wood which they had carried in. Beneath it she spread their blankets, that it might serve as a sleeping place for them both, and outside placed the food ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... are not likely to make a demand for the song. What you have to remember, my dear sir, if you wish to achieve success, is that music, if it is to sell, must appeal to the average amateur young person. The average amateur young person is the main prop of music in ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... abolish religion, that it "would try to put laziness, thriftlessness, and inefficiency on a par with industry, thrift, and efficiency, that it would strive to break up not merely private property, but, what is far more important, the home, the chief prop upon which ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... vastly more potential than the expression of any political platform. The paramount duty of Congress is to stop deficiencies by the restoration of that protective legislation which has always been the firmest prop of the Treasury. The passage of such a law or laws would strengthen the credit of the Government both at home and abroad, and go far toward stopping the drain upon the gold reserve held for the redemption of our currency, ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley
... the character of the dwellers therein. The cheeky-looking villa, with its superabundance of ornament, is a monument in masonry to the successful mining jobber on a small scale. The solemn-looking, solid dwelling, standing in its own grounds, where every flower bush has its individual prop, where the lawn is trimmed with mathematical exactitude, and not one vagrant leaf is allowed to stray, speaks with a kind of brick-and-mortar eloquence of virtue that has never grasped the sublime fulness of the Scriptural text which saith: "The way of transgressors ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... three children; Val, late of the Dorchester Regiment, Rowsley an Artillery lieutenant two years younger, and Isabel the curate, a tall slip of a girl of nineteen. They were all beloved, but Val was the prop of the family and the pride of his father's heart. Invalided out of the Army after six weeks' fighting, with an honourable distinction and an irremediably shattered arm, he had been given the agency of the Wanhope property, and lived ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... come, she was not now particularly unhappy. It was an alleviation that her mother was more of an invalid, so that some of the responsibilities of the household devolved on her, and her mother leaned on her a little. She was certainly not the prop of the house, or the lodestar to which they all turned for guidance, none of the satisfactory things women are called in poetry, but she was not such an odd-man-out as she ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... affected by the special conclusions at which I had arrived concerning the books of the Bible. I conceived myself to be resting under an Indian Figtree, which is supported by certain grand stems, but also lets down to the earth many small branches, which seem to the eye to prop the tree, but in fact are supported by it. If they were cut away, the tree would not be less strong. So neither was the tree of Christianity weakened by the loss of its apparent props. I might still enjoy its shade, and eat of its fruits, and bless ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... work with his home helpers, assisted by Dr. Spencer; but the work of composition seemed to make the ground give way under their feet, and a few adroit remarks from Dr. Spencer finally showed him and Ethel that they had not yet attained the prop for the lever that was to move the world. He gave it up, but still he did not quite forgive Tom for having been so easily convinced, and ready to be ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... more than a place to live in. To protect the house against the hazardous affects of imperilling winds, long poles are made to prop ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... were out of the wood the track became worse and worse. The rough-hewn runners constantly sank into snow-drifts and the sledge canted over, so that the poor man, trembling with fear and cold, had to prop it up with all his strength. If his twisted foot gave way, there was an end to him and ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... which seemed to have vanished out of the world. In ancient times it was natural to the old builders if they had, say, a barn to build, to make it strong and seemly and graceful; to buttress it with stone, to bestow care and thought upon coign and window-ledge and dripstone, to prop the roof on firm and shapely beams, and to cover it with honest stone tiles, each one of which had an individuality of its own. But now he saw that if people built naturally, they ran up flimsy walls of brick, tied ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... case. If the Tritons of the Solway shall proceed to pull down honest Joshua's tide-nets, I am neither Quixote enough in disposition, nor Goliath enough in person, to attempt their protection. I have no idea of attempting to prop a falling house by putting my shoulders against it. And indeed, Joshua gave me a hint that the company which he belongs to, injured in the way threatened (some of them being men who thought after the fashion of ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... 'Prop me up: if I lie so low I shall get bad again. If you had a touch of this asthma you'd know what it is ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... and I'll prop it up," requested Hippy. The guide did so, and Lieutenant Wingate dropped the stone beside it, after straightening up ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower
... white of her great sorrow, and Ernest felt as he walked along by her side that she seemed to lean upon him naturally now; the loss of her main support and chief advisor in life seemed to draw her closer and closer every day to her one remaining prop and future husband. ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... as I took yer that night, Master Nic, and then work your way up for a hour or so, and all under they tree-ferns you'll find pools and pools with lots o' fish in 'em; but I don't know how you're going to get on with that long thin clothes-prop of a thing. But, there, you're a gen'leman, and I s'pose you ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... I hope he will recover. Just imagine, general; he was found by the road, and brought home with a dagger in his breast, like a prop in a vineyard." ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... was planted against the wall outside that raving chamber, at the salient angle of a common prop or buttress. The edge of a shoulder and a heel were the supports to him sideways in his distorted attitude. His wall arm hung dead beside his pendent frock-coat; the hair of his head had gone to wildness, like a field of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... towards Sunch'ston. My father never took his eyes off him till he was out of sight, but the boy did not look round. When he could see him no more, my father with faltering gait, and feeling as though a prop had suddenly been taken from under him, began to follow the stream down towards his ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... sire has died, As falls the oak, to rise no more, Because his son, his prop, his pride, Breathed out his last all red with gore. No more on earth, at morn, at eve, Shall age and youth, entwined as one— Nor father, son, for either grieve— Life's work, alas, for both ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... "And suppose we prop up two or three pieces of fallen tree trunk before it," added Robert. "Warriors watching on the opposite slopes will take them for our figures and will not dream ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... window," he exclaimed. "Let us shut the window quick," he added impatiently; and then creeping softly up to the place, he took hold of the prop which held the shutter up, and gently drawing it in, he let the shutter down ...
— Stuyvesant - A Franconia Story • Jacob Abbott
... the head of the church wore the papal tiara or the English crown. Two hundred years after Wyckliff, in 1582, laws were still fulminated against "divers false and perverse people of certain new sects," for Protestant England would support but one form of religion as the moral prop of the state. She regarded all innovations as questionable, or wholly evil, and their authors as dangerous men. Chief among the latter was Robert Browne. But before Browne's advent and in the days of Henry the ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... stakes, and framed in each was a human skeleton, picked clean. With a shiver he remembered travellers' tales on the steamers of how these things were done. But then the blacks put down other stakes so as to confine his head in one position, and were proceeding to prop open his mouth with a piece of wood, when suddenly there seemed to be a hitch ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... the highly-puissant son of Vasudeva (Krishna) also addressed him. Knowing the king, the son of Pritha, afflicted in mind, and bereft of his relatives and kinsmen slain in battle, and appearing crest-fallen like the sun darkened eclipse, or fire smothered by smoke, that prop of the Vrishni race (Krishna), comforting the son of Dharma, essayed to address ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... enough to share that feeling, but with the addition of a man's half-unconscious selfishness. I needed her indomitable frailness to prop my grosser strength. I needed that something not wholly of this world, which women's more exalted nature infuses into their passions, into their sorrows, into their joys; as if their adventurous souls had the power to range beyond the orbit of the earth for the gathering of ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... elephants, with sufficient troops to form an imposing escort, and at the same time to make opposition useless. A letter couched in terms of the utmost friendliness, conferring upon the Prince the title of Prop-of-the-Kingdom, will be ready in a short time for her Highness's signature, and I shall present it with the patent of investiture and the khilat. Other khilats are being prepared in readiness ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... is convinced that it depends for its salvation wholly on them, that it is sustained because they uphold it, and that the day on which they cease to support it, it will fall like a manikin that has lost its prop. They intimidate the government with an uprising of the people and the people with the forces of the government, whence originates a simple game, very much like what happens to timid persons when they visit gloomy places, taking for ghosts their own shadows and for strange ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... is up so early," murmured Adams, rousing himself and using his elbow as a prop while ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... Changarnier's influence decreased, and X.'s enthusiasm abated. X. then frequented the Elysee, but without giving his adherence. He promised his support to General Bedeau, who counted upon him. At daybreak on the 2d of December some one came to waken X. It was Edgar Ney. X. was a prop for the coup d'etat, but would he consent? Edgar Ney explained the affair to him, and left him only after seeing him leave the barracks of the Rue Verte at the head of the first regiment. X. took up his position at the Place de la Madeleine. As he arrived there La Rochejaquelein, thrust back from ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... that the ring must be there and bade him seek everywhere; but he replied that he found it not and making a show of seeking it, kept them in play awhile. At last, the two rogues, who were no less wily than himself, bidding him seek well the while, took occasion to pull away the prop that held up the lid and made off, leaving him ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... directed towards the regeneration of Syria and Palestine, there cannot be a doubt but that, under the blessing of the Most High, those countries would amply repay the undertaking, and that you would end by obtaining the sovereignty of at least Palestine. That the present attempt to prop up the Turkish Empire as at present constituted is a miserable failure, we who see what is going on around us must at once acknowledge. What turn events will take no one can possibly tell, but of this I am perfectly certain that these countries ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf
... painfully sank to his heart, and was chill as a stone. And so again, again deceit; no, worse than deceit—lying and baseness... and life shattered, everything torn up by its roots utterly, and the sole thing which he could cling to, the last prop, in fragments too. In Litvinov's soul rose, like sudden gusts of wind before a storm, momentary impulses ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... wheels whenever they should get entangled, also, to be himself the drag, to prevent our too rapid descent. Such generosity deserved trust; however, we women could not be persuaded to render it. We got out and admired, from afar, the process. Left by our guide—and prop! we found ourselves in a wide field, where, by playful quips and turns, an endless "creek," seemed to divert itself with our attempts to cross it. Failing in this, the next best was to whirl down a steep ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... Radicals are now very anxious to come to some amicable understanding with the Government, and, if possible, to prop up the concern. They are very angry with their more violent compeers (Grote, Leader, &c.), and Fonblanque told me last night that they would take the slightest concessions, the least thing that would satisfy their constituencies, but that something they must have, ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... bloody tribunal. The people beheld with dismay these new servants of arbitrary power and of persecution. The nobility saw in it nothing but a strengthening of the royal authority by the addition of fourteen votes in the states' assembly, and a withdrawal of the firmest prop of their freedom, the balance of the royal and the civil power. The old bishops complained of the diminution of their incomes and the circumscription of their sees; the abbots and monks had not only lost power and income, but had received in exchange rigid censors of their morals. Noble and simple, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... raise himself a little. "Prop me up," he said. "I speak with difficulty—I have something ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... us then!" quoth Jorian; "it is past eleven o' the clock, and as I know them man by man, there will not be so much as one left able to prop ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett |
